Question by @yuta (https://gov.tools/budget_discussion/95)

05/04/2025 - 4:47 PM UTC

1. Can you provide a step-by-step example of how this tool will ultimately be used?

Much of the final details for this will be based on the research and design conducted within the early stages of the project. That being said we do have a vision for how this can work based on initial research conducted by the team and our experience working in this field for the past 7 years. The following is a high level vision of this process, taken from the early draft of “The TribalDAOs Blueprint” currently available for community input and feedback.

How a Tribal DAO Operates in Practice

Step 1: Formation and Membership

  • Community administrators follow a guided process to deploy community digital infrastructure. These initial services include a DAO portal with
    • membership and registration system (citizenship and communications)
    • rules building platform (governance and legislation)
    • treasury management and tokenomics system (treasury and currency)
    • community engagement and participation modules/dapps (research and development)
  • Community members join their TribalDAO through their mobile application and receive governance tokens.

Step 2: Rules development

  • Community members collaboratively work and vote on the rules and activities that will manage the governance and tokenomics of the DAO
  • Smart contracts are generated based on rules that have been voted on and supported by the community

Step 3: Treasury and Financial Management

  • Smart contracts are published on chain and initiate the creation of the Treasury and community tokens.
  • Tokens are distributed and purchased by community members and stakeholders to catalyse participation and generate value for tokens and funds for the Treasury.
  • The community continues to manage the Treasury, distributing funds based on the established rules.

Step 4: Community Engagement & Sustainability

  • Admins setup and connect community activity Dapps (e.g storytelling, mapping, surveys, fundraising, projects, etc)
  • Members participate through the connected dapp activities earning tokens funded by the Treasury (e.g contributing stories, adding to locations to maps, completing surveys, completing project tasks)
  • The local economy grows as more members and businesses accept and exchange community tokens.
  • Members can exchange community tokens for national currencies for use outside of the ecosystem.
  • Smart contracts ensure fair distribution of funds, token value, and transparent reporting of community contributions

Source: Draft TribalDAO Blueprint document. Current version is available for community feedback and input.

2. Does it explicitly explain why a blockchain solution is required and why specifically Cardano?
Specifically, this project requires blockchain for:

  • Transparent governance: Smart contracts allow communities to encode their own governance rules, enabling secure, on-chain proposals, voting, and treasury management.
  • Decentralized identity: While our core digital identities will run completely local (peer-2-peer, local-first distributed ledgers). Communities will need to coordinate across trust gaps, (e.g. from a Tribe to a bank), and our work with Identus has shown us the power of using Verifiable Credentials. i.e. blockchains are great for adding global-scale coordination functionality.
  • Community-owned economies: Blockchain enables token-based systems to reward participation, manage local currencies, and distribute shared resources. While some coordination may be local, once again global blockchains support coordination with trust across greater (social) distances.
  • Auditability and permanence: All decisions and transactions can be verified and tracked, building community trust and institutional memory.

Why Cardano?

Cardano offers a uniquely suitable foundation for this work, due to its:

  • eUTxO model – which provides greater security, predictable execution, and support for composable governance logic
  • Low transaction fees – making it economically viable for use in real-world, community-scale interactions
  • Native token support – allowing for asset creation without smart contracts, simplifying the tokenization of participation, reputation, and governance
  • Strong research roots and formal verification – aligning with the trust and durability required for long-term community adoption
  • Focus on global, real-world impact – Cardano’s mission and ecosystem have consistently prioritized use cases in underserved and emerging contexts, making it a values-aligned partner for Indigenous-led digital infrastructure
  • Interoperability potential – Cardano’s roadmap supports sidechains, partner chains, and identity integration, enabling communities to grow independently while still participating in a wider network

In short, blockchain is required to enable sovereign, decentralized, and verifiable coordination at scale, and Cardano offers the most suitable platform to do so—technically, economically, and ethically.

3. Are any data, research, user feedback, or relevant proofs provided?

This proposal is grounded in early-stage research and community engagement captured in previous projects over a 10 year period, and current TribalDAO Blueprint project — a living document that outlines the foundational concepts, design principles, and cultural requirements for building sovereign digital communities using DAO infrastructure.

The Blueprint draws on:

  • Direct feedback and insights from cultural advisors, technologists, and community leaders
  • Comparative analysis of current DAO models and tooling and how this can be applied by indigenous communities
  • Our team’s prior experience building relational identity systems and decentralized tooling (e.g. Ahau, Dark Crystal, Loomio)
  • Research into Indigenous governance structures, land trusts, and cooperative models that inform the architectural and social logic of the proposed toolkit
  • Direct experience of Indigenous land and community governance by the team and cultural advisors contracted through the project

This document serves as the conceptual and cultural grounding for the design of the Indigenous DAO Toolkit, and reflects a clear demand for digital infrastructure that supports existing governance and economic systems rather than replacing them.

An early version of the TribalDAO Blueprint is currently available for community input and feedback.

TribalDAOs Blueprint V2
TribalDAOs Blueprint V2 explores using DAOs for Indigenous governance and economic development, focusing on community-led models and blockchain-driven sustainability.
MātouMātou Collective

4. Has the project considered how to handle growth, large transaction volumes, or high concurrency?

Indeed. Optimising for On-Chain and Off-Chain Operations are key to alleviating congestion on the main blockchain. By processing routine or high-frequency transactions off-chain and recording only the final state on-chain, we can enhance performance and reduce costs. This is important in the phase 1 work.

Later, we will explore Hydra, Cardano’s layer-2 scaling solution designed to enhance the onchain transaction throughput and efficiency with Cardano’s ecosystem of developers. By establishing Hydra Heads, we could process transactions off-chain among a group of participants, reducing the load on the main chain and achieving faster, cost-effective transactions. Each Hydra Head can handle a significant number of transactions per second, and multiple heads can operate concurrently to scale with demand.

In the case of trading within Nature Markets (which other related organisations in our ecosystem are currently working on with the UNDP) these opportunities for scaling will become imperatives.

Using the right tools which best serve community needs is our constant goal. Our designs are intentionally modular — we intend to use Cardano for global scale coordination, and P2P networks/ databases for local/ internal coordination, large files storage. Not everything needs to (nor should be) on a global blockchain. We intentionally centre our “IdentityCore” off-chain first, because it is of the utmost importance that local communities can continue to coordinate, regardless of how accessible a global blockchain might be (e.g. in a cyclone, if internet goes down). We have extensive experience with Distributed Ledgers (Scuttlebutt, Hypercore), have been designing and building in highly concurrent environments (all of these are requirements of resilient data-sovereignty first infra). We’re building modular so communities can add services which match the right balance of accessibility and privacy.

5. Does it discuss potential to expand TVL, transactions, or staking incentives on Cardano?

This proposal directly contributes to expanding transaction volume, Total Value Locked (TVL), and long-term economic activity on Cardano by onboarding entire communities—not just individuals—into on-chain coordination, treasury management, and token-based participation.

The Indigenous DAO Toolkit enables communities to launch their own DAOs, create native tokens, and manage on-chain treasuries. These tools will:

  • Increase transaction volume through continuous use of Cardano smart contracts for proposals, voting, treasury allocations, credential issuance, and token interactions.
  • Expand TVL by onboarding communities with existing economic resources (e.g. tribal trusts, land-based economies, cooperatives) who will lock value on-chain to govern and distribute funding within their ecosystems.

Unlike short-term use cases or speculative applications, this proposal establishes real-world, long-term digital infrastructure where Cardano becomes the core coordination layer for self-governing communities. These are pre-existing communities already using tools poorly matched to their governance and sovereignty needs. They are already resourced and focused on community and economic prosperity, they already have organisational practices in place and running. We expect stories of success to spread quickly amongst our communities — we already have significant interest for tools we’ve made across North and South America, specifically because they are correctly aligned with how they are already working. The network effects of many many communities engaging truly powerful DAO tools will drive sustained activity and liquidity across the ecosystem.

6. Will it integrate or collaborate with existing Cardano projects, enhancing synergy?

Yes. A core aim of this proposal is to collaborate with and build upon existing Cardano-native projects, enhancing the overall ecosystem through interoperability, composability, and shared learning. We recognize that meaningful ecosystem growth depends not just on isolated innovation, but on the synergistic integration of aligned efforts.

In particular, we anticipate close alignment and potential integration with:

  • Consenz – whose focus on governance frameworks and participatory decision-making complements our own DAO tooling. We see strong opportunities to integrate Consenz's deliberation and consensus-building models into the governance modules of the IDT, particularly in communities where tikanga or consensus-based processes are culturally embedded.
  • Identus – whose work in decentralized identity and Verifiable Credentials can enrich our IdentityCore layer. We're actively exploring ways to align our relationship-based identity system with Identus' infrastructure to support interoperable identity standards across sovereign DAOs. We have already been deeply involved with Identus — contributing code, documentation, and strategic direction.

Our development approach is intentionally modular and open, designed to interoperate with Cardano-native identity systems, governance frameworks, and emerging partner chains. We will continue to engage with Cardano projects through community channels and technical collaboration opportunities to ensure that the toolkit complements, rather than duplicates, existing work—accelerating the collective progress of the Cardano ecosystem.

7. How does the project justify the size of the budget with expected outcomes (e.g. user adoption, ADA usage)?

The budget for this proposal is carefully scoped to deliver a high-impact, foundational toolkit that will enable entire communities—not just individuals—to adopt and build on Cardano. This includes the full research, design, and development of an MVP for the Indigenous DAO Toolkit ****(IDK), which is designed to be modular, reusable, and open source. The team includes highly skilled contributors across smart contract development, backend, identity systems, governance design, and community research, all of which are essential to building infrastructure that is both technically sound and culturally grounded.

This investment is justified by the scale and quality of outcomes:

  • Onboarding entire communities (Indigenous land trusts, co-ops, civic groups) that manage significant assets and engage in real-world economic coordination. These communities represent tens of thousands of potential users, many of whom are currently excluded from Web3 due to barriers in tooling, accessibility, and cultural fit.
  • Driving ADA usage and transaction volume through DAO participation, tokenized engagement, treasury transactions, proposal voting, and credential issuance—creating ongoing economic activity on Cardano.
  • Expanding Total Value Locked (TVL) by enabling communities to move existing off-chain resources (e.g. funding pools, cooperative budgets, land trust revenues) into on-chain treasuries, secured and governed by Cardano smart contracts.
  • Creating long-term developer ROI through reusable SDKs, governance templates, and integration guides—lowering the barrier for other builders to create DAOs, tools, and services on Cardano.
  • Establishing Cardano as the ecosystem of choice for real-world network state experimentation and sovereign digital community infrastructure, differentiating it from other chains that focus on speculation or DeFi-first approaches.

Rather than delivering a single-use application, this project lays the groundwork for generational-scale adoption, where Cardano becomes the digital foundation for new models of governance, economic resilience, and community empowerment.

8. Does it stand out compared to other approaches in cost-benefit terms?

Yes. This project offers a high-impact, system-level return on a relatively modest budget when compared to the scope and scalability of what it delivers. Most DAO or identity-focused projects tend to build isolated tools or narrowly scoped platforms that serve specific use cases. In contrast, this proposal is developing a flexible, modular, and reusable infrastructure layer, that will empower a broad range of communities to deploy their own sovereign DAOs on Cardano.

What makes this approach stand out:

  • Whole-community onboarding: Instead of targeting individual users, we’re enabling entire communities—such as Indigenous land trusts and local co-ops—to onboard into the Cardano ecosystem, multiplying adoption and long-term usage per deployment.
  • High reuse potential: The toolkit is designed to be open-source and modular, enabling other developers, projects, and ecosystems to reuse and extend its components—amplifying the return on investment for the Cardano treasury.
  • Deep alignment with cultural and real-world governance models: By designing around how communities already organise, we drastically lower the learning curve and improve adoption compared to projects that require people to change their processes to fit rigid tools.
  • Sustained economic activity: Unlike speculative or short-lived dApps, this infrastructure will support continuous, on-chain coordination (voting, treasury use, identity management), which translates into ongoing ADA transaction volume and ecosystem growth.
  • Strategic differentiation for Cardano: This project positions Cardano as a leader in real-world, culturally grounded digital sovereignty—an area where few other blockchains have made meaningful progress.

By not actively engaging and resourcing Mātou Collective, the Cardano Community risks developing tools that lack the essential input of Indigenous nations, thereby missing the opportunity to create truly inclusive and effective solutions. Incorporating Indigenous perspectives is not just about equity; it’s about ensuring the tools developed are practical, culturally appropriate, and widely adopted. Collaborative development with Indigenous communities ensures that solutions are not only technically sound but also resonate with the values and needs of those they are intended to serve.

In cost-benefit terms, the proposal offers not just immediate technical deliverables, but also strategic, ecosystem-wide value creation, making it a standout investment opportunity compared to single-purpose or short-term alternatives.

9. Is there a fallback strategy if timelines slip or if the implementation runs into major obstacles?

Yes. The project has been structured with modular milestones and clearly scoped deliverables, allowing us to adapt timelines and prioritise core functionality if unforeseen challenges arise. Our fallback strategy is based on three key principles: prioritise the core, deliver iteratively, and de-risk through transparency and community involvement.

This project is part of a multi-year arc. We have a very long-term vision for creating truly aligned infrastructure to support thriving communities. While our vision is grand, our approach has always been delivering real, working software with communities — we deliberately scope work into bite-sized pieces which can deliver real value at each step.

If timelines slip:

  • We will prioritise the core components of the IDT including the Mātou protocol and governance modules, ensuring that the foundational infrastructure is delivered even if advanced features are delayed.
  • We will re-sequence lower-priority features (e.g. UI polish, extended templates, non-critical integrations) to post-MVP development or to a follow-on funding proposal.
  • Project tracking and reporting will remain transparent, with monthly progress updates shared via the Matou.nz site and relevant Cardano community channels.

If implementation runs into major technical or resourcing obstacles:

  • The toolkit is designed to be interoperable and modular, allowing us to integrate third-party tools (e.g. governance logic from Consenz or identity primitives from Identus) to fill any short-term development gaps.
  • We have a network of experienced collaborators and contributors from previous projects who can be brought in for support if specific skill shortages or delays arise.
  • The project is supported by a functioning technology collective, which will guide strategic decisions, reallocate resources if needed, and involve the community in decisions about scope adjustments.

This layered and flexible approach ensures that the core mission and value of the project can be delivered, even under constrained conditions. Additionally, any unresolved features or opportunities can be carried forward into a Phase 2 proposal, supported by real-world insights from the MVP deployment.

10. Is there a month-by-month or milestone-based plan with clear deliverables?

Yes! We have a milestone-based plan with deliverables. We’re confident of the high-level plan, but this will become much sharper once we have further clarity about how funding process will work post proposal i.e. budget consolidation, voting, contracting, etc. A large part of Milestone 1 is also taking high-level goals of subsequent Milestones and generating a much more detailed timeline.

Also to note — our work is rooted in partnerships with communities, and so milestones must align with the Māori calendar year. For instance in Milestone 1 connections with community are easier during Southern Hemisphere Winter months than Summer.

As soon as we have more clarity over the process we will add additional detail and timings to the plan below:

🟢 M1: Project Kickoff & Setup (1 Month)

Key Activities:

    • Conduct a kickoff meeting with the team members and key collaborators to align on goals, deliverables, and timeline
    • Finalize team structure and responsibilities
    • Identify key stakeholders (including advisory group and tribal partnerships, etc) and confirm their involvement and commitment
    • Confirm advisory group and tribal partnerships
    • Finalize the project plan, including the scope, timeline, and resources required
    • Set up the necessary communication channels, project management tools, and documentation systems
    • Set up infrastructure - repos, communication systems, project tracking tools etc.
    • Ensure all team members are familiar with the tools and processes to be used throughout the project

Deliverables:

    • A finalised stakeholder list with clear roles and responsibilities
    • Project kickoff summary
    • Stakeholder on-boarding
    • Repo and workspace setup
    • A complete project plan with detailed timelines, resource allocation, and task assignments
    • Established communication channels and project management tools
    • A documented kickoff meeting summary that includes key discussions
    • Repo and workspace setup

🟢 M2: Research & Design Phase (1-2 Months)

Key Activities:

    • Conduct co-design sessions with stakeholders and community partners to gather insights into their governance, economic, and coordination needs
    • Mapping community governance, economic, coordination, and identity product needsap the governance structures, economic models, and coordination frameworks of the involved communities to understand their specific requirements
    • Translate the gathered needs into technical requirements and designs for the core protocol, SDK, and DApps
    • Translate tools needs into technical requirements, specifications and designs
    • Develop the Protocol specification, including technical details and foundational infrastructure for decentralized governance
    • Testing the suitability of current technologies in relation to the needs of the community, focusing on scalability and user experience

Deliverables:

    • A Comprehensive Community Research Report that details the insights from the co-design sessions and community mapping
    • A Toolkit Requirements & Use Case Library that outlines specific community needs and the corresponding technical specifications
    • The Final Architecture for core protocol, including the design for the SDK and initial DApps
    • UX and UI Designs for the MVP DApps that reflect the needs and preferences of the community

🟡 M3: IdentityCore & Developer SDK MVP (3-4 Months)

Key Activities:

    • Develop the IdentityCore MVP, which will include the ability to create identities, establish group relationships, and implement recovery features (identity creation, group relationships, recovery)
    • Start the development of the SDK development for developer integration allow developers to integrate with the IdentityCore system
    • Draft early dev documentation and onboarding materials
    • Create initial documentation and onboarding materials to assist developers in understanding how to use and integrate the system into their own projects

Deliverables:

    • IdentityCore MVP (v0.1)
    • Developer SDK (v0.1)
    • Integration documentation (v0.1)

🟡 M4: DAO Core Modules MVP (3-4 Months)

Key Activities:

    • Build the DAO module to handle setup, membership management, governance processes, and treasury logic.
    • Integrate DAO contracts with IdentityCore permissions system

Deliverables:

    • DAO Module MVP (v0.1) on testnet
    • Identity-integrated governance workflows
    • Iterations on IdentityCore, SDK (v0.2)

🟠 M5: Full MVP Toolkit Integration & Refinement (2 Months)

Key Activities:

    • Integrate IdentityCore, DAO Modules, and SDK into complete product
    • Conduct testing with early users and community groups
    • Refine UX, error handling, and developer tooling

Deliverables:

    • Easy community setup/ product (v0.1)
    • User testing reports
    • Module refinement (version increments)
    • Testnet deployment
    • User guides

🔵 M6: Launch of Testnet & Final Deliverables (1 Month)

Key Activities:

    • Finalize developer and end-user documentation
    • Publish open-source code and toolkit assets
    • Host a public launch event and present outcomes to the Cardano community

Deliverables:

    • Public GitHub release
    • Final Report
    • Product website with launch webinar / demo event
    • Investment Invitation
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